Earlier today, we reported that AT&T is seriously gunning for T-Mobile customers by offering up to $450 in incentives to switch. $250 of that incentive package comes in the form of trading in your smartphone, while the other $200 is a straight cash bonus to smartphone line.

T-Mobile CEO John Legere isn’t too impressed with AT&T’s promotion, and he even released an official statement than mock’s AT&T “desperate” efforts:

This is a desperate move by AT&T on the heels of what must have been a terrible Q4 and holiday for them. I'm flattered that we have made them so uncomfortable! We used AT&T's cash to build a far superior network and added Un-carrier moves to take tons of their customers - and now they want to bribe them back! Consumers won't be fooled...nothing has changed; customers will still feel the same old pain that AT&T is famous for. Just wait until CES to hear what pain points we are eliminating next. The competition is going to be toast!

Legere even went to far as to mock AT&T on Twitter by bringing up the fact that AT&T’s failed bid to acquire T-Mobile resulted in his company receiving a $4 billion breakup fee -- roughly a billion of that figure was in wireless spectrum.

#Randall – you gave us cash & spectrum AND we took your customers with #Uncarrier moves, do you really think you can buy them back?

Is Legere perhaps being a bit too cocky here, or does he have every right to snap back at AT&T for trying to bribe his customers? And what does T-Mobile have planned next week for CES? Legere definitely seems excited about shaking up the wireless market once again.

The Germans do not hate T-Mobile US (renamed in 2013). This is 2014, not 2011. T-Mobile USA was a budget carrier, offering a low-cost alternative to Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint. This was a slow, but steady business. Until 2007, when the iPhone debuted.

Suddenly, the world went crazy, and people no longer objected to ridiculously overpriced phones (thank you, subsidies! /s), or monthly bills so long they're shipped in a box. Thanks to the smartphone, consumers shifted from the cheapest possible voice plans and "feature" phones to expensive data plans and smartphones, which T-Mobile USA didn't have. So it lost customers, more than double the percentage points of what AT&T and Verizon lost in the same period. People wanted an iPhone so bad they were willing to go to AT&T. iPhone unlockers, met with mixed results, also switched to AT&T over time. T-Moblie was faced with an initially slow decline in profit in 2007-2009 that accelerated sharply in 2010-2011.

Parent company Deutsche Telekom didn't want to risk spending the money to upgrade networks for data. More importantly, it didn't want to pay the Apple subsidy, as AT&T showed a substantial increase in subscribers, but a less-than-substantial increase in profit. T-Mobile USA didn't want to get raped by Apple just to keep customers, only to risk imploding, anyway. So it decided to pull out of the market and sell itself, which was blocked by the FCC, thank god.

Eventually, it merged with Metro PCS and renamed itself to T-Mobile US. It also expanded its Android line (I think T-Mobile was the first Android carrier, with the G1), and eventually carried the iPhone. The Germans are loving T-Mobile now. It's not a rocket, but it's recovering again. Slow, but steady.